Memory
by sonicscrewed
Summary: The trouble with Clara's puzzle was that it was wrought with distractions. Small things, large things – coincidences for sure. Distractions that invariably and painfully took his focus from Clara's mystery and prodded at his memories – pulled his attention from her and ripped something pink and yellow from his subconscious.


If he weren't so frustrated, his thoughts wouldn't have traveled this path.

She was an impossible puzzle, Clara, a maddening equation with no clear solution. And he was good at puzzles. Excellent, in fact. Brilliant.

The trouble with Clara's puzzle was that it was wrought with distractions. Small things, large things – coincidences for sure. Distractions that invariably and painfully took his focus from Clara's mystery and prodded at his memories – pulled his attention from _her_ and ripped something pink and yellow from his subconscious.

There were little things that triggered his attention: The way Clara responded to things – words that triggered something that he initially couldn't place, conversations he could have sworn he had engaged in before. He brushed these ideas aside. Only so many words in the English language, only so many different ways to react to him being "alien."

Then, there were the slightly more noticeable things: The faint scent that always lingered on Clara's clothing. It was as if she surrounded herself with those _flowers_ . . . But, well, that was quite common for human females, wasn't it? Dousing themselves in flora, decorating their rooms with blooms, women did things of that nature. All the time.

So, Clara had done some things that had made him associate her with. . . with _her._ This association, it was just the not so deeply buried loneliness of a very old man, triggered by unexpected stimulus to the hippocampus. Nothing more. It had nothing to do with who or what Clara was. It was a distraction, one that he couldn't quite shake, but a distraction nevertheless.

He needed to go somewhere to think. Somewhere away from anything that might cloud his musings on Clara with memories of. . .

He needed to get away.

And so he took up painting. In a monastery. Parked the TARDIS a horse-ride away.

He painted Clara as he lived amongst monks. Reflecting, pondering the existence of this impossible woman. Pulling from memory every line and curve of her face, painstakingly portraying every feature.

As if the answer to her mystery lay in the mahogany of her hair, the warmed chocolate of her eyes, the mauve of her mouth. He painted the words beside her, looking for answers in phrases spoken twice from the lips of a woman twice dead.

"Run you clever boy, and. . ."

Remember he did. Not of Clara and her puzzle, but of the last time he had done this. Drawn the face of a companion, drawn a mystery of a woman who haunted his thoughts without explanation.

His hand stuttered on the final "R" in "REMEMBER," paintbrush dropping to the floor.

"Rose. . ." he whispered, pulling his hood over his head, collapsing onto his chair, admonishing himself for reminiscing on the past when there was a mystery to be solved in the present.

He was interrupted from his musings ten minutes and eleven point nine seconds later. The bells of Saint John, the TARDIS ringing – dear impossible Clara, calling him from centuries away via a phone number she'd managed to get from a woman in a shop.

A woman in a shop.

The universe was playing with him.

And he asked her. Of course he did. He had to. Her response? A flippant, dismissive, "I don't know," and again, "A woman in a shop."

Helpful, that. Because a description would have been nice. Something to work with would be fantastic. Something to tell him, "No, you fool. Rose Tyler is in a parallel world. Definitely not giving out the phone number of the TARDIS to strange women in need of 'the best helpline in the universe."

She could have said "insane shop girl with a gun and with crazy hair," and it would have put his mind at ease. It could have been River, after all. She would have made more sense. Much more sense than the direction his frazzled, overworked, superior Time Lord brain was going.

He had to change gears – well, after he took care of the Wi-Fi – he had to re-evaluate his methods. Obviously solitude wasn't working. It was time for some time travel investigation!

What could possibly go wrong in 1981? See how her parents met, work his way up to her present – there had to be something there, after all. And nothing, absolutely nothing to parallel his dear departed companion. Definitely not.

Except there was Clara's father nearly being run down by a gold colored car. That didn't trigger anything. Nope. It was a coincidence. Plenty of people nearly get hit by vehicles every day. And Pete had died, Clara's father had not. Tragedy averted, romance spawned, brilliant! Molto bene!

Wait, no. He didn't say that anymore. Didn't say that then, either.

So, it was nothing. Keep going. Clara's birth. Excellent. Childhood. Normal. Clara's growing up fine, nothing out of the ordinary, no more little tickles at his memory. Good.

Except then he lands the TARDIS by a graveyard – fifth of March, 2005. And there's a smell in the air. A slight, muted, scent of something burned down recently – and it hits him. He knows what that is.

Henrik's. He'd blown it up.

In an hour or so, he's going to be popping a cork into the head of Micky Smith's doppelganger. This very night, he'll be asking Rose Tyler onboard and starting –

No.

No, no, no. Here and now. Clara Oswald's mother is dead, and here is her grave, and it is enough. He's seen enough. Clara is as real in the here and now as she was when she was a Dalek, as real as she was when she was a governess.

She is impossible. She has nothing to do with Rose.

He needs to stop this foolishness, and move on.

Scoop up Clara, take her on an adventure, do what he does best and learn as he goes. Of course, he would go to the Rings of Akhaten during the Festival of Years. He would go somewhere where the currency, the things of value, are memories. Right now, when memories are haunting him, muddling every ounce of his logic. And of course, he would be having to take down a great big fiery "god."

He's done this before. Take down gods.

He's taken down a god who was trying to use the one thing he believed in, in the whole of time and space, as a pawn in his grand old chess game for freedom.

And when he tells the grandfather that he's lost things that this 'god' could never understand, she's the first person to come to mind. Rose. Rose and Amy and River and Rory and Donna and . . . everyone.

And he is afraid. There is so much he has lost, and so little he has to show for it, and he doesn't know if offering up these memories means that he will lose them. There are some memories he could do without, but not many. They're what have made him what he is today, and on most days, he rather likes that bloke.

He holds onto the hand of those memories and runs within his mind – locks them up tight – away from the shadow. Some things are just too precious to give up. They're not for sale. Not even for the sake of the universe.

Holding back is probably what has made the god flare up again, and his crouch is practically fetal when Clara rushes in. She's talking, and he's running through his own head taking stock and crunching numbers – he doesn't think he's lost anything vital.

Clara saves the day, and the Doctor tries not to be horribly angry with himself. He makes it up by getting her mother's ring back, but the leaf is gone. That leaf which was so, so important to her.

He stands in the TARDIS with Amy's glasses still in one pocket, his screwdriver in another, and beside it, his bit of psychic paper.

All things he could have given up, but didn't. Because he's selfish when it comes to his memories. They're all he has.

Clara calls him out, tells him she's not going to be a stand-in, that she's not going to compete with a ghost. She knows that he's been doing this, all of this comparing, all of this analyzing.

His memories are the ghosts that Clara is being compared to – memories of the other Clara's, of Rose. And maybe it's time to stop comparing, to stop trying to figure these things out.

Because this Clara, here and now, is her own person.

He hasn't been fair to her. Not at all.

He'll leave it alone for a bit, let the mystery work itself out.

Just as soon as he figures out why the words "Bad Wolf" and "Soon" have appeared on his psychic paper.


End file.
